The Fantastical Dangerous Journey of Q, Rebel Playhouse (2018)

The Fantastical Dangerous Journey of Q was directed by Sarah Sutliff at the 14th Street Y in New York City in December 2018. It ran in rep with another show, The Baby Monitor, and therefore its lighting plot was produced in collaboration with that show’s lighting designer, Kia Rogers.

For this show, I used three basic looks repeatedly throughout the show to help set the scene. The first was an outdoor look, in which the cyc was lit a sky blue color and the lighting from stage right was brighter than the lighting from stage left, in order to create the illusion that the sun was on that side of the sky.

Indoor Lighting

The second look was meant to create the illusion of being indoors. In this look, the cyc is lit an ugly brownish-orangish-yellowish, the color that most middle-school walls seem to be painted. The stage lighting is even from both sides and brighter from directly above, as when you are indoors and lit by ceiling lights.

Imagination

The third look was for scenes which take place wholly or partly inside Q’s imagination. For this look, the stage lights remain mostly the same as whichever look came before it - indoors or outdoors - by the cyc shifts through rainbow colors, to show the vibrancy of their imagination.

Red Backlighting

There are times where I added a hint of red backlighting, meant to help show Q’s anxiety and fear. In this scene, they are being bullied by their classmates, and the red highlight is visible on Q’s hair and on the hair of the Pencil’s puppeteer.

Confessions Special

There were three moments in the show in which all light was cut except for a special on one actor for a monologue. The specials were primarily sidelight, because the conceit of the scenes was that they were being lit by a flashlight - therefore, they were lit only from the side that the flashlight (visible on the right of the photo) would be lighting them from.

Silohouette

The final number of the show ended on a silhouetted pose. This mirrored the beginning of the show, which opened with a number that was similarly conducted solely in backlight.

Lighting Plot

This is the lighting plot for The Fantastical Dangerous Journey of Q. It uses mostly ETC Source 4s to provide lighting from multiple directions covering the entire stage, although we also used several parnels to help provide toplight and backlight over the whole stage. Many lights are twofered together due to a limited number of circuits in the space. We used LED lights to control the color of the cyclorama.